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I’ve added a short note about privacy to the sidebar. I suddenly realized today that most of the people entering their e-mails in various fields on this blog (comments, subscription) are blissfully unaware of the fact that these are available to me! Perhaps most of them wouldn’t mind anyway, but I thought it’s a bit unfair that they should not know.

I don’t keep those addresses stored anywhere, by the way, so if you don’t want me to see yours, just unsubscribe (there should be an option at the bottom of each e-mail), and I think you’ll be gone from the list (and if I ever googled your e-mail to check who you are – I’ll now try to forget whatever it was that I discovered; chances are I’ve already forgotten). I don’t think you can do anything with the e-mails ascribed to your comments – at least not without contacting me about it. (Yes, I do have the magical power of editing your comments, I do! Imagine that! Well, I am the admin and the sole moderator here…)

This should be good news for anyone interested in Polish music. As far as I know, in many parts of the world Polskie Nagrania (Muza) CDs are very difficult to find, so the possibility to download them should be convenient.

At this moment, their classical music selection consists of 60 items (which does not translate directly to CDs, because some of them are multiple-disc sets – I think it all adds up to around 80 CDs worth of downloads). Unfortunately, many of them are not available yet (“mp3 files in preparation” – this includes some very interesting items). And some of the links don’t work (404 errors). But I’m hoping that that is something temporary. And that the items that appear to be available are actually available, ie. the store does actually work – that is something I haven’t checked myself, as I don’t have any need for new music at the moment.

[As an afterthought, I’m adding this disclaimer: Just to be clear, none of what follows is meant as a critique of the two books mentioned. It most emphatically isn’t. I am overjoyed that these two volumes exist and that English-speaking readers will be able to access poetry by one of the most important and influential Polish poets alive today. These are simply my notes about one particular verse in one particular poem, there is no implication about the quality of the translations. In fact, there cannot be, since I clearly state that I am not even 100% certain that I am the one who is right. Since writing this post I’ve talked to one person about the subject, and that person was not really sure whose version is right either. Plus, I have not read through either volume in its entirety. So I couldn’t make serious overall comments about the translations even if I wanted to. I think my post shows to some extent the difficulties inherent in all translation, and particularly in translation of modern poetry. I think it is wonderful that a volume of new Różewicz translations has been published. And I think it is wonderful that a volume of older Różewicz translations is to be re-published. And I sincerely hope both volumes will meet with great success. And I hope this post will add to that, by making more people aware of the poet, of his English translators, and of the difficulty of their job.]

In my work, I sometimes compare multiple translations of a single text. Usually, the translations are into Polish. But yesterday and today I was perusing English versions of two poems by Tadeusz Różewicz.

In the course of that work I learned that there were at least two collections of his poetry in English translation with this year as their publication date – this abundance is most likely due to the fact that the poet turned 90 earlier this month. One of these is a volume of new translations and it has already appeared in print, the other is a third edition and amazon lists it as scheduled to be published on 15 November. The translations in the former volume (Sobbing superpower) are by Joanna Trzeciak. The translations in the latter (They came to see a poet) are by Adam Czerniawski.

What caught my attention and prompted me to write this post was the way both translators have approached a certain line in the famous poem Ocalony (The Survivor or Survivor, depending on translator).

In the original Polish the line goes:

To są nazwy puste i jednoznaczne

– and is followed by a striking list of very “elementary” antonyms (such as love and hate, or darkness and light).

I have no access to the specific Czerniawski volume just mentioned, neither in the new edition (not yet released), nor in any of the older ones, but I checked a different source, a Polish bilingual volume of poems by Różewicz in Czerniawski’s English translations – and there the line is rendered thus:

Now, what I find quite striking (apart from the introduction of a colon) is that the translators chose to render the words nazwy… jednoznaczne as words… equivalent or synonyms. Personally, I think that this may be a misreading (though not one of great consequence). And then again, maybe I’m wrong. Here’s an explanation.

The Polish word jednoznaczne is the plural nominative case of the adjective jednoznaczny. Jednoznaczny means ‘unambiguous, unequivocal.’ I believe that in the quoted context nazwy jednoznaczne means, roughly, ‘words whose meaning cannot be questioned or discussed, words which are absolutely straightforward, which have an obvious, clear meaning.’ These words are at the same time also empty (puste). This is an oxymoron of sorts: if words have an obvious, unequivocal meaning, one could also say that they are “loaded” with meaning, that they are, simply put, “meaningful.” Yet, the poet says that they are “empty”! As if despite their semantic “strength” they had no power. Which makes perfect sense in the context of the entire poem – it is a poem about, among other things, the impotency and weakness of language, of poetry, of ideas (represented in/by words) in the wake of World War II atrocities.

The English translations just quoted seem to be based on an interpretation different to mine (though it is not a dramatic difference). An interpretation where the word “jednoznaczny” is taken to mean “synonymous” or “equivalent”. But to what? Are we to understand that those words are equivalent to each other (within each pair, probably)? I guess that would be the translators’ intention – and it wouldn’t exactly go against the general meaning of the poem: it would mean that antonyms have become synonyms, language has completely collapsed. And yet I feel that this translation is less straightforward, to me it is even a bit counter-intuitive, it requires a very specific way of understanding the language of the poem (well, that’s my impression).

I can imagine a line of argumentation that would support the translators’ choices. First of all, currently, the proper Polish term for synonym is bliskoznaczny (or rather wyraz bliskoznaczny), and not jednoznaczny. But the term wyrazy jednoznaczne (jednoznaczniki) does exist and means “perfect” synonyms – it’s an old word that Różewicz could have easily known back in 1947. Still, I doubt if an interpretation in terms of linguistic terminology is what he expected of the reader. And then there’s another, related possibility. The word jednoznaczny takes on a slightly different meaning in the construction jednoznaczny z, which means synonymous to. In the poem there is no z (to). But that is hardly a clincher because, well, this is poetry, creative use of language is to be expected, and ellipses are nothing out of the ordinary. Still, I definitely prefer my reading. 😉

(As a side note, let me add that my personal feeling would be that the construction jednoznaczny z is normally used to connect an action – not a word – with an equivalent word or other action – as in: “doing that would be equivalent to…” In the poem, we are clearly dealing with words, not actions. But my “personal feeling” may be wrong – a quick search in the PELCRA corpus returned lots of results with nouns…)

Anyway, I am surprised that both translators chose what I find to be the less natural reading of the poem. Did one of them influence the other? Perhaps not, they may have done so independently. And perhaps they were right to do so. In the end, I don’t know.

As an addendum, let me nitpick just a little bit more: the word Różewicz uses is nazwy, which, to be precise, does not mean ‘words.’ It means ‘names.’ Probably in the sense ‘nouns’ (as in the Latin nomina – nomina propria, nomina appellativa etc.). At least that’s how I understand it. So nouns would perhaps be more precise a rendition (they are in fact all nouns), but one has to admit that words is really quite fine as well (and so is synonyms, a hyponym of words). It is difficult to say if These are empty and clear nouns would actually sound any better than either of the two versions I’ve quoted above.

I probably sat down to write all this with some point in mind, but I’m not sure anymore what it was. Just an observation about two translations of a certain poem, I guess. I know there’s nothing particularly illuminating in saying that translations are always specific readings of a work, but maybe there’s some interest in looking at one more example of the process…?

In case nobody noticed: the blog was gone (made private) for a couple of days (a week?). But now it’s back. There are some changes in the old posts, a couple of them (about 4 or 5) are gone, and images and sound files (practically all of them) are gone too. This is due to a change of heart I’ve had about copyright and the interpretation of what constitutes “fair use”.

In other blog-related news, we’re slowly approaching the 25 000 views mark, so the revitalization I was planning (two posts ago) really is in order. I have several ideas, just can’t find the time…

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OK, this is just something that struck me. Until today I wasn’t aware of the existence of this person, but what makes me wonder is the rationale behind spelling his name this way. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky?! The guy was born to Polish parents. So his name is Zygmunt Krzyżanowski. Or, if you drop the single diacritical (which is common practice in English), Zygmunt Krzyzanowski. His adopted homeland was Russia, so obviously enough, he spelled his name using the Cyrillic alphabet (Сигизмунд Доминикович Кржижановский). But now suppose someone wants to mention him using the Latin alphabet. What is the point of transcribing (transliterating) the Cyrillic back to Latin using one of the several schemes available, if the name was actually spelled using Latin script in the first place? Am I missing something here?

[UPDATE: OK, I realize that referring to two “exotic” languages, Polish and Russian, may have made my point difficult to understand. So here’s what would happen in an analogous English-Russian situation: Imagine there’s someone called John Smith. John Smith moves to Russia at an early age and embarks on a writing career there (as an exclusively Russian-language author). In Russia he is referred to as Джон Смит. Now, at some point someone decides that the writings of Джон Смит should be translated to English. What name will they be published under? John Smith, I would imagine. However, that would be an inaccurate transliteration of Джон Смит. The two possible “correct” transliterations are either Džon or Dzhon Smit. But we would be getting an artificial “Dzhon Smit” in place of the original John Smith. It doesn’t make sense and goes against the tradition of “reconstructing” the original spelling of non-Russian surnames when transcribing them into Latin script. Obviously, as the Krzyzanowski example shows, that tradition is not a “rule” and, besides, it can sometimes be problematic, as in the case of those names which can be traced to several Latin spellings. But one could point out that nobody spells Шнитке as Šnitke or Shnitke. Instead, he is spelled Schnittke. Or Эйзенштейн – practically everyone spells his name Eisenstein, even though the “proper” transliteration would have been either Ejzenštejn, or Ejzenshtejn, or Eĭzenshteĭn, or Eizenshtein, or Eyzenshteyn. Perhaps both these artists influenced that “reconstructed” use themselves, but that doesn’t make it less rational.]

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Just a quick heads-up for those who will be in NYC or vicinity Jan. 22-28 (2011): The main focus of Juilliard’s Focus! festival next year will be Polish modern and contemporary music! You can read more about it in an article by Joel Sachs. Or go straight to the calendar of events (more to be announced, I am told). Looks like a really great program, including both the Polish modern music warhorses (what a contradiction in terms!) and stuff that probably isn’t very widely known abroad (both contemporary and slightly less contemporary). Wish I could be there. No, seriously: a lot of the music I’ve never heard live, and would love to. (Wait a minute, that doesn’t make much sense. If I ever do visit the States, I seriously doubt whether I’ll be spending a lot of time listening to Polish contemporary music.)

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